It is becoming increasingly common for a computer user to own large numbers of graphic images. These may be generated by various applications such as drawing programs, paint programs, icon generators and bitmap editors. Alternatively, the images may be purchased for use with other programs such as "clip art" images for use in word processing programs and desktop publishing programs. Further, many programs include their own images which are displayed during program operation.
Graphic images are available in a variety of formats, such as bitmap, TIFF, PCX, ICO and other formats, which various formats are generally not compatible in the sense that they must each be displayed in a different manner. In addition, the term "images" can also include documents that are not comprised primarily of graphical material, but do have a pictorial representation. These images are typically stored as binary files in the computer's disk memory (or CD ROM) along with other files and programs of different types. In a modern computer system, most programs consist of a number of files and it is not uncommon for a user to have hundreds, and even thousands, of files on a single computer, especially since most computer systems typically have large storage disks on the order of 100-500 megabytes.
In the case of small personal computers such as the IBM PC manufactured by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y., and compatible computers, the dominant operating system is the MS-DOS operating system developed and sold by Microsoft Corporation, Redmond Washington. One significant limitation of the MS-DOS operating system is that file names are limited to a total of eight characters (excluding spaces) plus a three character file "extension". Therefore, it is difficult for a user to assign meaningful or descriptive names to stored images if there are many images. With the MS-DOS operating system it is possible to group and categorize the images by using directories and sub-directories to form a branching "path" to organize the images, but in many cases such an organization is not possible because images associated with specific programs generally must be located in predetermined locations relative to the programs.
Many prior art graphics programs utilize the MS-DOS file system for document storage and therefore, in order to display a particular image with a display program other than the program for which the image was designed, the user must know where to look for the image, in particular, the user must know the device on which the image is stored and the MS-DOS path specification. In addition, the user must be capable of identifying the image by use of the MS-DOS eight character file name plus 3 character extension. Finally, there exists no common, readily-available mechanism for viewing images prior to use.
Other prior art programs allow sequential display of graphic images (browsing) but do not have the capability of providing a textual search. In addition, most graphic browsing programs restrict available searches to one directory (usually the directory in which the graphic program is located) and all graphic documents must be available at the time of the search. Further these prior art graphic programs restrict their search to document types that are directly related to the application providing the search, therefore, the programs cannot be used to coordinate all graphic images in the entire system.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for organizing and displaying images stored in various formats in various locations in a computer system.